Good Movies/games Of Late?

[Sim9]

Anyone seen any good movies/games/anime/manga lately?

I've summed up my opinions already on BigFish, but was wondering others top picks so far :D

In the anime area, I've been watching Lost(Last?) Exile, which is good. Has some great CGI. Focuses on the Victorian-era, but adds in a futuristic twist by powering everything with steam. Whole fleets of airships engage in combat, all powered by steam. Very interesting series... ;)

Also watching (and reading in manga ;) ) PlanetES, which is good. Will post as I find out more about the series, and formulate my views on it. So far I like it, but we'll see how it develops ;)

[Google]

[Walrii]

I've been watching Gundam Wing, I know it's old(er) but giant robots are just too cool. The fact that it is available on Kazaa doesn't hurt either...

But seriously, I'm only on episode 3, each episode takes about 6 hours of downloading (I leave it on overnight). I still have yet to finish downloading Vampire Hunter D. I watched the first minute (AVI Preview) and it looked awesome.

The problem with anime is that whenever you get it off the internet (legally... of course) its been downcoded (I made that word up) and during quick action scenes, everything is blurry or slow FPS. So, when I can, I buy DVDs (okay, truthfully, I ask for DVDs for x-mas...) like I did with Fooly Cooly.

Is there any way to improve the quality of videos from the internet? I know DIVX player is "optimized" for radeons, would that just make it faster or would quality go up too? I read somewhere something about on the fly "deblocking" for some piece of hardware (vague) has anyone heard the same?

[Sim9]

I've been watching Last Exile, and there are some great action sequences. Of course the size varies from 130megs to 200+megs, but quality degradation, even on fullscreen is not noticeable.

It really depends on how it was originally encoded. What's the filesize of the originals?

Also, Vampire Hunter D. II is *really* good! :D

[Walrii]

Gundam Wing ranges from 93 megs (#1) to 38.8 megs (#3). Each episode of Last Exile is one half hour right (20+ minutes)? If each episode was 120 megs, I doubt I would go through the trouble of downloading them. :(

[Sim9]

Hmm, those file sizes are quickly becoming the standard....

Also becoming popular are several gig archives of entire series. Very useful for those who have a good connection, but I can see how it would be problematic for others :(